• Sherwood Forest Hospitals FT chair wins campaign to become Labour’s candidate 
  • Claire Ward has been on FT’s board for 10 years and chaired it for two
  • First East Midlands mayor will be elected next year

The chair of a Nottinghamshire acute trust has been selected as the Labour candidate for elections to become the first mayor of the East Midlands.

Claire Ward has been campaigning over the summer to be selected as Labour’s candidate and will now run in the first election for an East Midlands mayor next spring.

Ms Ward was appointed Sherwood Forest Hospitals Foundation Trust’s chair in October 2021 and has been on the board for 10 years. HSJ understands she will remain chair while campaigning to become mayor.

She is a qualified solicitor and was previously Labour MP for Watford for 13 years, during which time she was a justice minister. Ms Ward has also held a number of executive and non-executive roles in community pharmacy, and continues to work as director of public affairs at the Pharmacists Defence Association.

The new regional office, which will cover Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, will be headed up by the mayor, with the only other confirmed candidate being local councillor Matthew Relf, who will run as an independent. 

Ms Ward told the Nottingham Post she wanted to get more “funding and powers” for the East Midlands region.

Source

Announcement 

Source Date

August 2023

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